Media 's Effect On The Self Esteem Of The Girls

Self-esteem is a global evaluative dimension of the self and determines if you are satisfied with certain aspects of your life. For example, your appearance, your personality, your abilities and your relationship with others. The media is a powerful source of tool to manipulate adolescents that portrays unrealistic images that affect the way they feel about themselves. I believe that the social media does affect the self-esteem of adolescent’s due to self-image.

Furthermore, media surrounds teenage girls in today’s culture. It is impossible to escape the sight of media. The media’s constant idealistic beauty is ever present to a vast amount of self-conscious girls. This image of beauty causes girls to have low self-esteem (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar). Media defining this perfect body image causes many adolescent girls to feel dissatisfied with their bodies and become depressed. “Viewing ultra-thin or average-size models led to decreases in both body satisfaction and self-esteem in adolescent girls aged eleven to sixteen, with changes in self-esteem fully mediated by changes in body satisfaction” (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar).

Mass media can have an adverse effect teenage girls by showing body types that are unrealistic as the normal and desirable type of body to have. Young women look to the mass media to see the societal norms for beauty, and what they see can influence the way that they view themselves. By portraying women who possess a body type that is uncommon, it shows teenage girls that they need to change themselves to reflect the images they are shown. Portraying body types that emphasize thinness and exaggerated features, the mass media try to establish what is socially acceptable. Teenage girls who see this message feel pressured to become what they see, often not realizing that the body types portrayed in media are unrealistic.

The media plays a major role in the way our society sets certain standards and forms opinions. No matter where we go, the media is everywhere. The message that the media illustrates today is that “thin is in”. When was the last time you flipped through a magazine or through the television channels without seeing some type of advertisement promoting a new diet or new product being promoted by a super thin model or actress? Young girls are the main targets for new products. It is common for young girls to be obsessed with what is “in”. The message that young girls are getting from the media is that having bones sticking out is the way to look. They then become preoccupied with their bodies and self image. “ The exposure to ideal images coincides with a period in their lives where self regard and self efficacy is in decline, where body image is at its most fragile due to physical changes of puberty and where tendency for social comparison is at its peak” (www.eating-disorders.org.uk/docs/media.doc). The media illustrates to young girls an “idealized” shape which leads to being beautiful, popular, successful, and loved but which is not realistic to have unless you have the “idealized” shape. Therefore, they believe that their lives will be perfect as long as they are thin and have the “idealized” shape. The two main sources of media that reach young girls are television and magazines.

The Fashion Industry is affecting our body image in a huge way. They are the number one contributing factor in how we perceive ourselves and what is normal, especially in young girls. The following research shows some of the negative effects of the Fashion Industry. First, the negative effects of the media on body image and how it give countless an unrealistic views of what is normal. Second, how the Advertising and Magazines can affect our self-image in a negative way by using extremely thin models to promote sales. Eating Disorders will be looked at lastly, to reveal the high number of women and young girls suffering from anorexia and bulimia and how much responsibility falls on the Fashion Industry. The conclusion will end with the review of key factors and how the fashion industry has affected the self-esteem and body image of our society.

The increasing and widespread use of media, as well as it tremendous ability to influence its audience, has raised various concerns over the effects the media has on its viewers. One of the fields of increasing concerns is the idea that the media portrays unrealistic body images and that these portrayals have negative consequences on their viewers, especially so for women. Women have always been associated with ideals of beauty and a particular body image. The question arises as to how far the media further perpetuate these models and body images, and what are the consequences of these effects? When the media works to perpetuate such ideals of beauty and body image, the majority of the female population, who do not conform to such ideals and body type, fall prey to psychological issues resulting from body dissatisfaction such as depression, self-hate, negative moods, and emotions, particularly for the younger women. Such negative emotions, when evoked, can lead to negative consequences and actions for the affected female population, which include drastic, harmful steps such as crash diets, self-harm, or cosmetic surgery.

Imagine waking up every morning, struggling to get out of bed and hating to look at yourself in the mirror. Girl’s will look into the mirror for hours and criticize every last inch of their body with the words “fat, ugly, worthless” echo in their head. They think their body isn’t good enough and want to look skinner like the other woman in magazines or people they see on TV. The media has a big part in self-image toward young woman. The message being sent to these women on the media is that they are not pretty enough or thin enough. Which results in people having an eating disorder.

The culture of media has now taken a large affect on young girls and their body images. Young girls are feeling dissatisfied with their bodies because of the way society views women. The media tells us what to look like, what clothes to wear, make-up, what cars to drive, and sometimes what to eat. Media is changing people constantly through advertising and by showing us the looks and fashions of celebrities. Advertising has negative effects on the formation of oneself as seen through the nature of the promotion of its’ products. This effect is particularly prevalent among young adolescent girls. Young girls feel the need to join dietary plans or result to eating disorders Advertising in society results in negative effects on girls through self-image that leads to harmful consequences. The media is the biggest factor contributing to girls’ dissatisfaction with their bodies, causing eating disorders.

As a direct result of the rapid advancement in technology over the past 50 years, the media has become ever-increasingly present in our everyday lives. The latest fashion editorials and the most exclusive celebrity selfies are always just a click away. Something so pervasive, however, should be intently studied and handled with extreme caution due to the vast influence it can have over its audience’s mind. Too much exposure to certain stimuli has previously been shown to affect cognition and behavior in adolescents. So why should media be any different? Social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are becoming increasingly popular in this day and age. However, being fed a constant visual stream of models and celebrities with perfect faces and bodies cannot be very good for one’s self-esteem. For some time now, there has been an ongoing debate on whether media has an effect on self-esteem and if so, whether its effect is positive or negative. Consequently, in this report I will discuss and analyze several studies which address the topic of media and its impact on self-esteem.

(Heubeck 2006) For many young people, especially girls, the ideal continues to chase them as they grow into young women. Young girls begin to internalize the stereotypes and judge themselves by media’s impossible standards. The power that the media holds in impacting the lives of young girls is detrimental and eventually affects their body image, their satisfaction of their own body, and portrayal of their body as an object.

The model’s face, hair, body shape, dress, and just their overall physical appearance can cause the viewer to have a positive opinion about the model in just a short amount of seconds of just viewing the image. When teens view a model on TV, or in a magazine all they think about is looking “like a supermodel: perfectly thin, tall, sculpted, and commanding,” which is “our cultural epitome of feminine success” (Zimmerman p 2). With this, american society plays a role in determining whether it is acceptable for a woman to look “thicker”, or better yet to look like a beautiful more common woman that is “thin”. We tend to follow what other people want to see rather than listen to our own self which is why models and advertisements have taken control over the minds of many teen girls. In “The Skinny on Models,” the writer brought to the attention that a Brazilian fashion model named Ana Caroline, who showed creations of a famous designer, Giorgio Armani, dies due to the eating disorders, she had because of the ultra thin body images the fashion industry was promoting, bringing the attention of banning skinny models (“The Skinny on Models”). Furthermore, many models portray to be “the perfect” girl, which in many cases leads for teen girls to be turned into someone they wish to be because of the view that models have given to the world. For example, fashion runways and contests have given us a perspective of what many people look for because the such model has won the “Ms. Universe” title. With the idea of body image, insecurities start to develop in the mind of a teen girls, creating low-self esteem. Teenagers are in a stage of life where all they care about is acceptence towards a group of people and media creates and ideal image of what one should look like. Model’s weaken a girl’s self esteem by

Advertisements promote new products each year, yet how many of them really work? We as women we are an easy target to persuade, and we cannot tell when an advertisement is speaking the truth. A woman is constantly bombarded with advertisements about beauty. They will believe what they see in magazine covers, but the truth is that all those pictures of your favorite models and celebrities have been retouched. They will start comparing themselves with size 0 models. Women believe that to look good and to be pretty, they have to be the size of the models. Advertisements persuade us to buy unnecessary products. Their publicity is with the sole purpose for them to have faith in that product and go buy it. It distorts woman 's perception of beauty, and impacts women not only negatively in their self-image, but their health too. They make women believe that they will only reach perfection if they buy their products. I believe that media may contribute significantly in self-esteem issues.

Being enormously influential to young girls is the media, and what is viewed by many girls on a daily basis. By having a female on the front cover of any magazine which has been drastically edited and manipulated to fit the role of ‘perfect’. Clearly shown on most popular magazines, the females on the cover have been edited so they do not have stretch marks or unwanted fat over their hips or wrinkles around their eyes. By constantly seeing this ‘perfect’ body image, people being to obsess over it and aspire to be the same, without knowing the amount of effort gone into the picture and the stick rules to be able to have the photo taken. These strict rules for the ideal body image focus on the women and how showing more sun-kissed, toned up skin, it will promote a more monotone body structure for many women around the world, as girls are forcing themselves to eat less, to practically starve themselves to maintain the ‘perfect’ body image. It is believed it will gain them respect from others if they look like the models, or give them attention to aspire in life, while they are not happy at

In 2001, actress Kate Winslet caused controversy over a statement she made about her weight. She told Britian’s Radio Times that she needed to lose weight “or I won’t work.” She was referring to the nearly fifty pounds she gained during her pregnancy, but fans were still upset over the famously curvy actress’s confession. Then, in 2003, Winslet shocked fans and critics alike when she expressed her distaste for GQ Magazine’s digitally slimmed pictures of her (Tauber, 2001). The most recent criticism of Winslet was in 2008. She appeared in Vanity Fair Magazine looking slightly thinner than normal, and many people were judging Winslet for being hypocritical. Winslet’s rep said that she was not airbrushed to look thinner, that that is

Media has become an important factor in the society. media represents many good and bad things, but the message that the media depicts by telling girls that their value allies in their bodies is a negative thing as it will only leave them feeling disempowered and it will distract them from making a difference and becoming leaders. The media has a significant hold on girls. They portray them to have prefect bodies and hour-glass figures and this has a negative impact on them. Younger girls start comparing themselves to the prefect idealistic figures that the media shows. There is a misconception of what is beautiful because of what the media is portraying to girls. Media uses sex and violence to sell products which results in youngsters having wrong ideas about themselves or the others. Media suppresses girls from thinking as individuals.